While I was increasingly drawn to slowing down, Kamala Harris, a veteran of many courtroom battles, geared up for the fight of a lifetime.
Kamala Harris lost her moonshot at the Presidency but she’s already a shining beacon for many. And for me personally, she’s done a tremendous amount of good. To start with we share a similar laugh. It’s boisterous, likely to erupt at any time, and goes on longer than it perhaps should but there’s no turning off a hearty cackle mid-way, is there? When anyone comments on my laugh, I’ve begun to say “I laugh like Kamala”.
We are also born in the same year. I hadn’t paid any attention to this until she was nominated as a candidate for the most powerful job in the world. The march of time had me down in the dumps. I was beset by listlessness and plagued by doubts and misgiving. None of the things that used to give me joy seemed appealing. I looked back at the things I put my hand at in the past and wondered whatever made me take up such taxing challenges. And as for the present—was anything worth doing anymore? I wallowed in a compound of ennui and self-pity.
While I was increasingly drawn to slowing down, Kamala Harris, a veteran of many courtroom battles, geared up for the fight of a lifetime. Here was a woman the same age as me who was excited to start the most ambitious and significant chapter of life. She wasn’t shying away from the rigours of campaigning, she was embracing it wholeheartedly. She rolled up her sleeves, rounded up her posse and marched into battle. Being just a heartbeat away from the Presidency, she was prepared for the job. She was the understudy and when the opportunity to play the lead role presented itself, she seized it with open arms. She didn’t think she had done enough already, she was raring to go. And thousands of miles away, she made me haul myself back up from the inchoate messy puddle I seemed to be stuck in. And though she got trumped instead of being triumphant, Kamala’s helped me get my mojo back at work and in my social life.
A prepared mind receives messages and they don’t always have to be from a glamorous American politician. I looked around me and saw women whose everyday lives are inspirational. Women like Vidya, Shaila and Jackie have been reinventing themselves and their careers, age no bar. They are leading their best lives, pursuing new interests and building exciting connections. Vidya Bangalore, my older sister, had a successful career in the aviation industry abroad. Returning to India, she trained to be a teacher, restarted a defunct non-profit school and redefined education. She’s since moved on to becoming a mentor and is involved in many service organisations. She has an extensive network and an active social life.
One day Shaila Panday decided she’d had enough of running her family’s optometry business. She had begun travelling with a group of seniors and realised she could do a better job of organising tours. Soon, she started curating meet-ups and tours for friends within India and abroad.
My old friend Jackie Pinto has an unending source of energy. After being a soccer mom for years, she didn’t fancy spending her life as a society hostess. She taught herself to do several things – she organised events for her old college before writing a society column. For a brief stint, she was a consultant for my company. She then edited a lifestyle supplement for a major newspaper. She is now a sought-after local guide and influencer.
These three women have shown me it’s perfectly alright to let go of things that I used to do and embrace new interests. I no longer feel apologetic when people question why I don’t do some of the things I used to do in the past. I own my choice of being a biographer, co-writer and writing coach.
To paraphrase “Timeless” an evocative poem by the Indian-born Canadian poet Rupi Kaur, “I ripen with age, I do not come with an expiration date and now for the main event, curtains up … let’s begin the show”. As long as one is willing to embrace all the possibilities that life holds, there’s no dread of “growing into irrelevance”.
* Sandhya Mendonca, author, biographer, and publisher, casts a female gaze at the world in this column.